Coinbase Institutional Co-CEO: Bitcoin’s “Second Wave” of Institutional Capital has Arrived

Seven of the largest banks in the world are now running on Coinbase infrastructure, and Brett Tejpaul, Co-CEO of Coinbase Institutional, says they’re having a “Kodak moment.” He joins Grace Remington and Sean Hagan to explain why the driver has shifted from Bitcoin ETFs to stablecoin payments now that money can move from a Citi account to USDC, across the blockchain in a second, and into a corporate account on the other side. He also gives a candid read on Bitcoin: the macro setup is great, the performance has been disappointing, and institutions aren’t yet treating it as anything but a tech trade.

Chapters:
0:00 Seven of the World’s Largest Banks Are Using Coinbase Infrastructure
1:19 From ETFs to Payments: Citi, USDC and Instant Bank-to-Blockchain Transfers
2:44 $400 Million an Hour in Stablecoins and the Banks’ “Kodak Moment”
4:38 Stablecoins Are a “Speck of Dust”: Payment Providers First, Then Banks
6:10 Agentic Commerce Arriving at the Same Time as the Big Players
6:49 Is Bitcoin Still a Leveraged Tech Trade? “Disappointing” Performance, Great Setup
8:44 Connecting U.S. Funds to Deribit’s 85% Options Market Share
11:06 The Second Wave: Net-New Entrants and Coinbase’s “Amazon to AWS” Pivot
12:57 Activating the Whole U.S. Through Coinbase Infrastructure
13:56 Quantum, 90% ETF Custody Share and “Safe Forever”